A roundup of news on sporting events, people and places in Southeast Michigan by columnist Jim Evans.

Monday, November 12, 2012

A thank you note to our government

I’m not sure when
government started getting a bad rap. It was long before Obama was re-elected,
though.

Believe me, I know some
politicians are incompetent boobs, and we’re not talking botched cosmetic
surgery.

But my experience has been
that there are incompetent boobs working in both the public and private
sectors.

But are you still sputtering
about how the government is just worthless?

So when was the last time you
planned a picnic or a motorcycle trip without the National Weather Service’s
input? How about that round of golf at the country club?

What about our highway
system? Try driving from here to Florida strictly on the back roads. Good luck
navigating through Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. I hope you took all three of
your vacation weeks for the drive alone.

Don’t like the Food and
Drug Administration? Go on and buy all your pharmaceuticals from that guy who
sells them out the trunk of his car. Make sure you get the gallon-size bottle
of snake oil. Also, how was the steak that smelled like road kill taste?

So someone’s breaking into
your house. Call a security guard who makes minimum wage. Didn’t we just honor
our veterans? But if you do not like the government, then you do not like the
military. Whether you agree with its use at times, it is certainly nice to have
all that might on our side, isn’t it?

Ask your elderly mom how
she feels about Medicare. Ask your retired dad how he would be without Social
Security. So you would like to invest your own money instead? Go on and trust
an unregulated Wall Street with your hard-earned cash and see what you have
left come retirement age.

Sorry, I just had to rant.
I’m a sports writer and I honestly do not know much more than diddly squat
about our government.

P.S. There is one more
thing I do know is that the government funds about 80 percent of basic science
research in this country. That includes biomedical research into things like
cancer and as a cancer patient myself, I know how far we’ve come in treating
the disease.

For that alone, I thank
the government. So do my wife, kids and grandkids.